AS devastating as the physical destruction brought by
Katrina has been, it may turn out that one of the hurricane's most
enduring
legacies is the way it made visible the effect of racial and class
disparities
on who lived and who died, who escaped early and who suffered from
being left
behind.

Such realities have always been clear to those on
the bottom
of the hierarchy, of course, and to others willing to face the reality
of white
supremacy predominance. But now all of white America
has an opportunity to see
what racialized disparities in wealth and well-being look like, in
painfully
raw form.

Will we take that opportunity, or turn away out of
fear? Do
we have the courage to face the meaning of what we have seen? The
process
requires a kind of honesty that is rare in the history of white America.

<>>

The first step is to recognize that for all the
talk of
diversity and multiculturalism — by liberal Democrats and conservative
Republicans alike — much of white America
thinks of the United
States
as a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its
citizens
are white, though they are — for now but not forever, as demographics
shift.

What makes the United States white in this
ideological sense is the assumption, especially by people with power,
that
American equals white. Those people don't say it outright; it comes out
in
subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.

Here's an example: I'm in line at a store,
unavoidably
listening to two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about
a
construction job. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans
standing
next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that
"this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear that this
man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing
whether they were Mexicans or U.S.
citizens of Mexican heritage. It didn't matter. The "guy" was the
default setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were
not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys
standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The
race and ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story, but
the
storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the guy" not be
confused with "the three Mexicans."

Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a
2004 news
conference, President George W. Bush explained that he believed
democracy would
come to Iraq
over time:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't
believe
that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free
and
self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that
people who
practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose
skins
aren't necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern."

It appears the president intended the phrase
"people
whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are
not
from the United
States.
That skin color he refers to as "ours," he makes it clear, is white.
Those people not from the United States are "a
different color than
white." So, white is the skin color of the United States.
So, those whose skin
is not white but are citizens of the United States are ... ?
What are
they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their
skin
color may not be the same as ours"?

This is not simply making fun of a president who
routinely
mangles the language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing
funny
about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about
skin
color to religion (Does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it
seems
clear that he intended to say that brown people — Iraqis, Arabs,
Muslims,
people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind — can
govern
themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly
white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the
capacities of
people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their
ability
to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is
white. Or,
more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what
do "we" do with citizens of the United States who aren't
white?

What do we do with peoples we once tried to
exterminate to
take their land? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor
and used
like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit
as
low-wage labor? All those people — indigenous, African, Asian, Latino —
can
obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political
achievement, and the popular movements that forced the powerful to give
people
those rights provide the most inspiring stories in U.S.
history. We can acknowledge
these gains made in the United States — always
understanding that nonwhite
people, with some white allies, forced society to change — while still
acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains.

But it doesn't answer the question: What do white
"Americans" do with those who share the country but are not white?

We can pretend that we have reached "the end of
racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain
stupid.
We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate safe forms of
diversity and multiculturalism while avoiding the political, economic,
and
social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as
stupid.
The fact is that most of the white population of the United States
has never really
known what to do with those who are not white. Let me suggest a
different
approach.

Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois
said he
knew was on the minds of white people. In his 1903 classic, The Souls
of Black
Folk, Du Bois wrote that the question whites were afraid to ask him
was:
"How does it feel to be a problem?"

Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks
carried — being
seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as
a people
who posed a problem for the rest of society.

Du Bois was right to identify "the color line" as
the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time
for
whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at
the heart
of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the
racial
arena, we are the problem.

The moral task of white America
is to do something that
doesn't come naturally to people in positions of unearned power and
privilege:
Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust
society and
have no right to some of what we have.

We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate
our
whiteness, strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because
we are
white, steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious
and try
to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to
ask
ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"

That is the new White People's Burden. Instead of
pretending
to civilize the world, let's try to civilize ourselves.